[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it ...
We’re so used to just glancing at the environment through the eyes of the past that we’re frequently not certain if we are in fact paying attention or if we merely think that we’re paying attention. Dynamic meditation in everyday existence invo...
Memorizing someone else’s explanation of the truth isn’t the same as seeing the truth for yourself. It is what it is—the memorization of second-hand knowledge. It is not your experience. It is not your knowledge. And no matter how much material...
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of informati...
Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the s...
The most interesting inconsistency in thought is connected with the Bower of Bliss. This passage--the twelfth canto of the second Book--is probably the best known in the whole poem and the most frequently cited as an example of Spenser's sensuous bea...
Three years with Claudia had taught Ruso that when a woman said something did not matter and refused to tell you what it was, it usually mattered a great deal—to her, if not to you. Frequently her way of punishing you for not knowing what it was in...
In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the ...
Here the phenomenologist has nothing in common with the literary critic who, as has frequently been noted, judges a work that he could not create and, if we are to believe certain facile condemnations, would not want to create. A literary critic is a...
At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by lorry drivers who have either just unloaded or or are waiting to pick up their cargo. Anyone nursing a disappointment with domestic life...
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfect...
It's possible to find order in chaos, and it's equally possible to find chaos underlying apparent order. Order and chaos are slippery concepts. They're like a set of twins who like to swap clothing from time to time. Order and chaos frequently interm...
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that musty old cheese that we are. We have had to agree...
Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils. The unhappy man who has been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks bene...
The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a ...
[The thief-taker] was conspicuous by his age, I should estimate he is in his middle fifties, and by a bearing, I am tempted to call it dignity, wanting in the others. He has a good head of hair, only a bit thin on top, blond going grey, and sea green...
God clues us in to the fact that, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." In short, God is not logical. This is not to say that he is illogical, only that he is not limited ...
The notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual vigor and spiritual fulfillment, the notion that in the eyes of the gods the tight-lipped hero and the wet-cheeked victim are freq...
If you can sustain your interest in what you’re doing, you’re an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people’s professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. ...
When we soak our soul in the grace of the Gospel, we'll find our desire to spend time with Him in prayer changing. We'll begin to carry on a nonstop conversation with Him in our heart because we know that He loves to hear our voice. Then, when we are...
Journeying through grief is one of the most "normal human" experiences you can have. Nevertheless, all too frequently the heartbroken seem to feel alienated by society. Unfortunately in our culture, we are taught to hold our feelings in. If someone a...
